Another Time END
?: Where..? LUNA: I see you've finally woken up, Kyle. ?: ... Kyle? LUNA: Ah, yes. Of course. You've only just woken up in this timeline. It's only natural for some of your memories to be missing. lurched upright, jumped off the bed, and ran around to the other side of the partition. The mirror over the sink was covered with a film of dirt. I wiped it off with my sleeve, and my reflection stared back at me. There was no mistake. The reflection belonged to.. KYLE: Kyle Klim.. So I'm Doctor Klim.. Zero Sr.'s clone? LUNA: What..? How do you know that? Shouldn't you still be suffering from amnesia? [An excellent question, one I didn't quite know the answer to myself. I knew who Kyle Klim was. In another history, he had been called "K" and had worn a suit of armor.. He hadn't just worn the armor in that history, though... apparently he'd worn it all his life. Kyle had been born and raised in this lunar installation, which seemed to be called "Rhizome 9." Rather late in his life Akane had appeared as a mother figure, and he had consequently grown very attached to her. I knew everything about him. But even though I knew it, I didn't feel''it. Was I really Kyle Klim? Every time I looked in the mirror, I saw his face.. The spitting image of Sigma Klim in his younger days. I looked down. There was Dio, still handcuffed. I turned back around to Luna.] KYLE: What day is today? LUNA: January 27th, 2074. KYLE: Then today is the last day of the AB Project. Akane has explained everything in the garden.. Then she drew a knife and attacked Phi. How long have I been asleep? LUNA: About five hours in real time. For them it would have seemed like a little more than two hours. KYLE: So they still haven't been treated for their Radical-6? LUNA: No, they've all been given the antiviral. It just takes a while to have an effect. KYLE: Ah, I see. So the consciousness of the younger Sigma has gone back into the past.. It should have happened right after Akane attacked Phi, right? LUNA: Yes. KYLE: Why am I here..? LUNA: The doctor carried you back here. You were in the pod in the garden. KYLE: So the person you call "the doctor" is Sigma Klim, as inhabited by his age-appropriate consciousness? LUNA: Y-Yes, but.. how do you know that? KYLE: ... Dio seems to have remained unconscious. LUNA: Yes. I've been administering Soporil whenever he.. gets restless. KYLE: What about the others? LUNA: They've all gone off to different areas. Tenmyouji and Quark, for instance.. QUARK: Oh! Ummm... Right! Mr. Klim! TENMYOUJI: So the sleepyhead's finally up, huh? KYLE: What are you two doing here? TENMYOUJI: You don't know where we are? KYLE: This is the upper floor of the pressure exchange chamber. The real one. TENMYOUJI: Mm-hmm. QUARK: We were just about to get dressed and head out. KYLE: You plan to return then? To Earth, I mean? TENMYOUJI: Yeah. QUARK: Sigma told us where we could find the shuttle that brought us here. Well, guess he's not really the Sigma I knew anymore. He's Doctor Klim now -- or Zero Sr., depending on how you look at it. KYLE: Why? TENMYOUJI: What do you mean, "why"? KYLE: Um, well.. I'm just curious why you would choose to return to a devastated planet when you could stay here. TENMYOUJI: How's staying here gonna help? You aren't gonna say something idiotic about how we should wait here until Sigma changes the past, are you? KYLE: ... TENMYOUJI: You can't "wait" for something that's already happened. Grammar doesn't work that way. Hell, nature doesn't work that way. You following me? We've already lived through history. Sigma failed to keep the virus from getting out. About forty-five years ago, Radical-6 created a pandemic, and the antimatter reactors blew up. That all happened. Whatever Sigma does in the past, history's not gonna change. In fact, it's ''because of what he did, or didn't do, in the past that we've got this past and present. Let me give you an example. TENMYOUJI: Imagine a group of a hundred motorcycles, driving down an endless freeway. Eventually they hit a junction. The road splits in two. One freeway continues off northwest, and the other stretches out to the northeast. So one guy, we'll call him S, pipes up. "Let's go northwest!", he says. So they take the northwestern road, but about a mile past the intersection something horrible happens. A semi driving the other way veers into their lane, and plows through the bikers. Ninety of them die. The surviving ten are wounded, but survive. They don't stop, though. They keep riding down that highway, and eventually they'd gone 10,000 miles. TENMYOUJI: Then, suddenly, something happens that they couldn't have predicted. S, who had survived, suddenly has his consciousness thrown back in time. He ends up back in his own body, just before they reach the junction. He remembers everything. So what does S do? What anybody would do. "Let's go northeast!" That means all one hundred of the bikers survive to reach their destination happy and healthy. And they all live happily ever after. TENMYOUJI: ... That's what you're thinking, right? It's a great outcome for the hundred bikers that went northeast. But what about the ten that went northwest and survived the accident? QUARK: Huh? Wouldn't it be nine people? I mean, S's mind went back in time, right? TENMYOUJI: Ah, right. Okay. Nine people then. What happens to the reality they were living? Does it just disappear when S changes the past? It's not as if it was only bad things that happened during that 10,000 mile trip. Maybe one of them fell in love with a woman working at a gas station they stopped at, and had a child. Maybe one of them picked up a homeless kid, who joined them on their adventure. That 10,000 mile journey would be full of stories. Friendships, farewells, romances.. The loss of those ninety lives is horrible and unfortunate, but what would re-writing their history mean? The nine who survived lived full lives. How can it be right to just erase all that? The survivors overcame their own misery and loss, and made the best they could of the hand they'd been dealt. Isn't that worth something? Isn't that the best thing that humans can aspire to? Is there really any point to a world where everything is happy? Are people who struggle for a better life just idiots? Being human is about fighting even when it seems hopeless, and finding happiness even in a world that hates it. Are you saying that's worthless? KYLE: ... TENMYOUJI: If you're saying re-writing the past will erase all these other timelines, then whatever god wrote those rules can fu--.. look, I'm just not gonna accept that, all right? You get it? KYLE: If Sigma changes the past... then you and Quark will never meet. QUARK: I-is he right..? TENMYOUJI: No. It's not gonna happen. We're here, right now. This is reality. Even if Sigma does change the past, we're not just gonna disappear or something. QUARK: Oh.. then that means we get to stay together? Good. TENMYOUJI: Thanks, kid. KYLE: I understand how you feel. Why you want to return to Earth is clear. You have lives there, I imagine. There are likely people waiting for you. TENMYOUJI: Right. QUARK: Uh-huh. KYLE: Have you already said goodbye to the others? QUARK: Phi, Luna, Alice, and Clover all saw us off. We told them we'd see them again someday, and then came here. KYLE: They were the only people you want to say goodbye to? TENMYOUJI: No point saying anything to Dio. QUARK: Besides, he's asleep. You were asleep too.. TENMYOUJI: Sorry, but we didn't really know much about you. KYLE: You have a point. Akane was in the armor in this timeline, after all. What about Sigma? QUARK: Well, he's not really Mr. Sigma anymore. KYLE: Of course. He is Doctor Klim now that his consciousness has returned. TENMYOUJI: Yeah, but more importantly he's the guy who brought us all here. Not a lot of warm feelings there, you know. KYLE: And.. Akane? TENMYOUJI: ... ... ... Never mind her. She's just like him. Not the Akane I knew. She must have seen some pretty awful things over the years. Hell, she might not even be human anymore. But the Akane Kurashiki I know isn't here. She's not anywhere. ALICE: In the end, Clover and I were just pawns. Pawns to be used and then gotten rid of. Still, it's not like we're completely resentful. We had to be here to help change the past. That part's easy to understand. But.. CLOVER: It kinda sucks, though. I mean, Sigma and Phi have it easy. They get to go back to December 25th in 2028. They'll stop the Radical-6 and save the world, and then they'll have a nice, normal future to look forward to. In other words, they get to go back to point E and just enjoy history like it was supposed to happen. ALICE: But we don't. We're stuck with point C as our starting point. CLOVER: You told us about Tenmyouji's story, right? The one with the motorcycles. It would be like if Alice and I were kidnapped right before the intersection. Then whoever grabbed us takes us to wherever the bikers are going 10,000 miles to the northwest! ALICE: Don't get us wrong. We know why we had to be here. Without us, S's consciousness wouldn't have been able to go back to right before the intersection. CLOVER: If that couldn't happen, then the fate of those ninety dead bikers would be sealed. But.. ALICE: It's still not the best situation for those of us left in the northwest. We're stuck in the reality where the ninety bikers died. CLOVER: Are we just supposed to go live on Earth? It's a wasteland now. And what about our friends and families? We left a whole world behind forty-five years ago. ALICE: Even if it is for the greater good.. CLOVER: It just doesn't seem fair, does it? ALICE: Yeah, it's a little bit much. CLOVER: So we went and talked to the old lady. ALICE: She told us that there is one way. CLOVER: One way we could get back to the past.. KYLE: Let's say you do go back to the past. Wouldn't that cause your minds to get thrown back here? That seemed to be how Sigma and Phi's jumps worked, at least.. ALICE: Yes, you're right. CLOVER: But this is different. KYLE: Different? How so? ALICE: From what she said, it sounds like there's a way we can send our bodies back in time too. KYLE: That's ridiculous! It would create a paradox! How could you have two Clovers and two Alices at the same time? CLOVER: But that wouldn't happen. ALICE: Akane says there's a way around that. KYLE: How on Earth does she plan to do that? CLOVER: Schroedinger's... ALICE: .. Cat. PHI: Oh. Hey, Kyle. Figured you'd come here eventually. KYLE: Where's Doctor Klim? Luna said you were with him. PHI: He said he was tired, so he's off resting right now. There's a bedroom at the end of the hallway. He's in there, if you're curious. KYLE: .. PHI: Oh, right. He told me to turn on this hologram projector thing when you showed up. Want me to start it? KYLE: S-Sure. DOCTOR: Glad to see you. There isn't anything in particular that I have to tell you. However, I imagine there are a great number of things weighing on your mind. I'd love to answer all your questions, but unfortunately my circumstances make that an impossibility. I hope you can forgive me. Everything I know, Phi should also know. I have instructed her to answer any questions anyone might have - anyone other than Kyle, that is. KYLE: Wh-what does he mean, "other than Kyle"? PHI: Who knows. Is there anything you want to ask? KYLE: R-Right.. Well.. I guess I may as well cut to the chase. Just who are you, Phi? PHI: I'm not Superman, that's for sure. And I'm not Batman, or Spiderman, or Aquaman, or a merman, or a wolfman. I'm not a brahman, or common, or ramen. I'm not a caiman either, so you really don't need to worry about anything. KYLE: Please don't dodge the question. About five hours ago, Akane attacked you with a knife. That triggered something, which sent your mind back to the past, correct? Specifically, you were sent to point D - April 13th, 2029. On that date, your body was already in Akane's custody, although by then you were in cold sleep. You wouldn't have regained consciousness, but your mind was now inhabiting that body. That pod was your home for forty-five years. You slept there, frozen, until the time was right. Then, on January 25th, 2074, you were finally thawed out, even though you didn't wake up. Still unconscious, you were carried to the AB Room. That was when your consciousness changed bodies again. A version of you from December 25th, 2028 arrived, pushing you out, and sending you back to December 25th, 2028. This is when you finally woke up. In 2028, you found and joined forces with Sigma, whose older mind was inhabiting his younger body. Together, you attempted to infiltrate the Mars mission test facility. Unfortunately, your plan failed. The Radical-6 did escape on New Year's Eve. That failure determined the path you followed. Instead of going along the line that branches out to the right from point E, you headed straight to point D. Point D being April 13th of the following year. That was the day that you made your way to Akane's hideout and asked to be put into one of the treatment pods. Another consciousness enters your body around that time, from the future. It is, of course, the version of you that left your body when Akane attacked you in the garden. This caused the two versions of you to swap places. And you moved forty-five years into the future, where you woke up on the garden floor. That put you on the line that comes here. So if we discount the time you spent in cold sleep, for you, only three and a half months have passed since that happened - "That" being when you were sent back into the past from the garden. Have I missed anything? PHI: No, everything you talked about you got right.. KYLE: What do you mean by that? PHI: I'm kind of an unknown variable in this equation. You could think of me as a kind of.. x-factor. It's taken me the last three and a half months to understand it. KYLE: And I haven't understood anything in the last three and a half seconds. Could you please explain? PHI: It's kind of like the relationship between classical mechanics and modern physics. Strictly speaking, you can't combine velocities with v1 + v2. (v1 + v2) / (1 + (v1 * v2) / c ^ 2) is the actual equation. Of course, the sort of velocities we encounter in day-to-day life don't come close to being c ^ 2, which is the speed of light squared. That means that (1 + (v1 * v2) / c ^ 2) is usually going to evaluate to something pretty close to 1. Since that would mean dividing by 1, it's usually okay to just skip that step and use (v1 + v2). You see what I'm saying? In most situations it works, even if it isn't technically correct. So you knew enough to get the stuff you were talking about right. As long as you stick to that, you won't run into any problems. KYLE: I don't quite understand... in fact, I feel like you're dodging my questions. PHI: So was that what you wanted to ask about? KYLE: No. What I really want to know is what happened between Christmas and New Year's Eve in 2028. You and Sigma infiltrated the Mars mission test site, didn't you? PHI: Yes. KYLE: What happened there? How did Sigma lose his eye and both his arms? And why was Radical-6 in there in the first place? What could a deadly virus have to do with a simulated mission to space? PHI: Sorry, but I can't tell you that. KYLE: Why? PHI: Because it would change history. There is a history where the virus didn't escape. That's the line that goes to the right of point E. In that timeline, humanity isn't heading for annihilation, and Earth isn't red. The future is much brighter. But if I tell you what you're asking me right now, then that reality will disappear. You understand? KYLE: I don't. Why would all of that disappear if you told me what I want to know? PHI: You're about to go back to the past, right? KYLE: The past? Don't be silly. I can't do that. PHI: ... Then where the hell did you learn all this stuff? I just listened to you tell me a bunch of things you shouldn't have known about! You were sleeping in the pod in the garden. You just woke up! So how can you know all this? You know my past! Sigma's past! KYLE: I-I... AKANE (old): I shall give you your answer. You are not Kyle Klim. Your body is Kyle's, but your consciousness is not. Think about it. Do you really believe you are Kyle? Or could you be someone else entirely? ?: Then.. where is the real Kyle's consciousness? AKANE: He was thrown out when you entered. Right now - in a manner of speaking - he has arrived at December 25th, 2028. His consciousness has gone into a body from that time. ?: ... AKANE: I doubt you know how much the doctor loves Kyle. He raised him on his own. Kyle is irreplaceable. Do you really think he would go back to the past and leave Kyle behind here? I know what I told the others - that Kyle was Doctor Klim's spare - but that was not his only purpose. Kyle's consciousness is integral to what we are trying to accomplish. This new mission begins on Christmas, and ends on New Year's Eve, 2028. Its purpose will be to infiltrate the test facility and prevent the spread of the virus. For this to happen, Kyle is absolutely necessary. ?: And that is why he created him? AKANE: Yes. ?: So now that my consciousness has entered his body, the doctor has achieved his objective. Kyle has gone back to 2028 to participate in his mission. AKANE: Correct. ?: There's one thing that troubles me. Kyle was created before reaching point B from point D. That means his body did not exist on Christmas in 2028. Does that mean he has entered my body? Have we just switched places? AKANE: I suppose you could put it that way, yes. ?: That's ridiculous! What's going to happen to me? Are you telling me I have to spend the rest of my life here in this box, living in a borrowed body?! AKANE: No, not at all. You can travel freely through time and space. You are an uncontrolled variable that entered our closed system. As such, the rules of this world do not apply to you. ?: I-I have no idea what you-- AKANE: Please don't try to play dumb. I know what you are. Surely you must know by now, too. You are about to go into the past, and save the world. Phi and Sigma, even with all of his future knowledge, will need your help. Only you can right the horrible wrongs of our past. Only you can save the world. ?: T-There's no way I-- AKANE: Yes there is. You have to. Don't you want to know the truth? Don't you want to know what happened in between Christmas and New Year's Eve in 2028? ?: Well, yes, I do, but-- AKANE: Then you must believe. Reality is shaped by what we believe reality should be. If observation can change the motion of a particle, then how is it odd to think that human thought can shape reality? Your will can change history! The world will be reshaped into the one you imagine! Remember what I've told you. Only you can change history. Only you can save the world! or BEGINNING On the PS Vita version, getting this ending gives the achievement A Certain Point Of View. The Flow Warp screen re-appears fully unlocked, and any part of the game can be replayed. Category:Endings